Food Policy in Britain

Saturday I had been planning to go to the Farmers Market at Gibside, but as the weather was wet and there was nothing in particular that I needed, I decided to skip going. As it is my freezer is full and I will not need to buy much food for the next month as it is.

I do try very hard to support local food and business, but there are limits to what I can do. Also I don't like wasting food. As my regular reader already knows with both Scottish and Jewish blood in my genes, you get two stereotypes in one with this Wood Mouse, but it is not about being stingy. For me it comes from being poor and having experienced real hunger. In my past there was a time when I just did not have the money for food. Therefore I have been in the situation of having nothing. While that only lasted for five days, it really is something you never forget.

Thus I can understand how and why it is that the poor in society often are forced to choose the poor quality cheap crap that the supermarkets offer. However, what I can not and will never understand is why or how people living in poverty can end up throwing food away. I am no saint, there has been occasions when I have had to throw out stuff that had gone off. But it is rare. As I have said here before, I generate so little waste that I normally only need to put my bin out once every four or five weeks.

I never have a problem with odour either, as if there is a smell I get the bin emptied sooner. So I can not understand why some people end up throwing out at least a fifth of the food they buy. Even if I have vegetables that are starting to look tired, I will make them into a soup or a stew or a curry. And I have never given myself food poisoning either as if something is off or rotten it does go into the bin. But there are people that just look at the label date and will throw out perfectly good food simply because they have become detached from the land, food and cooking.

Supermarkets date label products to sell the item quickly and to keep their insurers happy, not to provide any meaningful information to the consumer. Equally, the same applies to the so called healthy options and nutritional information. There have been over the years many television programmes that have shown by scientific analysis that while a product may be low in fat but will have excessive amounts of sugar or salt. Therefore even when people try to help themselves the major retailers deliberately mislead people. They are not doing anything illegal but it is highly ill-moral.

A major part of the problem is that western governments have allowed the supermarkets and the food industry to greatly adulterate our food to keep prices low. While this helps the poor gain the required calories it has led to most cheep food lacking in vital nutrients. Therefore even if someone is poor and wants to eat a healthy diet, it is much more expensive. This is why I get frustrated with governments and government policies. At the moment there is a campaign to encourage people to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables per day. Yet this is undermined by the cheap food policy as the poor often can not afford to buy Fruit and Vegetables.

Add to this the problem of obesity and the message of a balanced diet is clearly being lost in the marketing noise from the shops of cheap food. Also with education policy so narrowly focused on academic skills, there is a lack of other life skills. While it may rightly be argued that it is not the schools role to teach skills that should be coming from the home, unless schools do this, the children of parents that lack the skills to pass on will be the next generation that will have the same problems.

I also understand that folks often just do not have the time to cook. While when I was a child it was normal for the woman to be the head cook and bottle washer, housekeeper and and all the other roles women have to play within a nuclear family, and now women often have to work just to make ends meet. I am not saying that it is wrong for women to work, far from it as a woman should always have the same economic and career opportunities as do men. However society has now become far to focused tomorrow rather than today.

In both of my significant relationships I did most of the cooking. It looks as though with my new better half that will happen again, but the point is that in the home the work load needs to be shared so that both halves of a partnership can manage to cook and eat a balanced diet.

Last week the British Government made a policy announcement regarding food security. With the analysis of the situation as it stands now, the policy can only work if there are also changes in the education system and an end to cheap food. Now I don't want to see any food system that further boosts the supermarkets profits, they have enough money and power already. And this adjustment to policy will do just that. In addition this adjusted policy relies upon other parts of the world selling us their surplus. But this all fails to acknowledge the effects of climate change and the altered weather patterns that are already here.

I genuinely wish that governments would have properly thought out and multi departmental policies so that one part of the system is not causing problems elsewhere. If we actually ensured that the education system truly empowered people to earn higher wages, and provided the life skills to make informed choices, we could solve a major part of the problem of poverty. And it is the poor that have the lowest quality diet. Therefore by helping people out of poverty would help solve the problems of obesity and poor nutrition.

The poor have been ignored once again in all this, and the government is leaving food policy to the food industry and industrial agriculture. To me it appears as though the government has stuck its head in the sand once again and has failed to see the coming problems. Just as happened with the banking collapse, there were strong indicators that the banks were going to fail years before. A single summer of drought or excessive rainfall, both likely with the changes that we have made to the climate, and there will be a famine in Europe.

The cheap food policy is already forcing farmers and growers out of business and in Britain we only grow or produce sixty percent of our food requirements. Back in 1980 it was ninety percent. And simply relying on our ability to just buy what we want will not work. As when there is a major shortage of food, it will at the minimum cause prices to rocket and the poor will not be able to afford to eat.

This is a crisis that is as predictable as the banking collapse and the British government is failing to see this coming.